Desert Dreams (16 page)

"So you could leave me behind. Bastard!" Blood
rushed to her face.

He walked over to the horse and threw the saddle on its back.
"You don't know what you're getting into, Anne-Marie."

"I told you not to call me that!" Her skin had gone
cold, despite the heat of the day. She couldn't bear the idea that Rafe
Montalvo had gone through her private things, had read a personal letter.

"Then what should I call you?"

He pushed the stirrup and cinch over the other side of the
horse, then turned to gaze at her, leaning against the saddle on the horse's
back.

"How about Christina?" she asked, her voice trembling
with rage and dread. Did she really want to go down this path?

He seemed to pale slightly at the mention of that name. Or
was it just her imagination? He moved away so quickly she couldn't be sure, but
she sensed a change in his demeanor as he threw the stirrup over the saddle.

"Why would I call you that?"

"The doctor said you told him my name was
Christina." She'd wanted to elicit some response from him, but something
in his silence and his manner disturbed her. She pressed on. "Who is
she?"

"It's just a name I made up." He reached beneath
the horse's belly to catch the cinch as he spoke.

"I don't believe you." The words came out before
she even formed them in her mind.

"I don't give a damn what you believe." His face
had turned to stone, and he gave her the most implacable stare she had ever
seen. It should have been enough to warn her, but she couldn't let it drop. He
had reacted, and she wanted to know why.

"Let it be," she mimicked. "Isn't that what
you were going to say?"

"Are you watching what I'm doing? You tighten the front
cinch first. Not too tight.”

"I need to do it myself if I'm ever going to be able to
do it on my own."

"So you can run away again?" He repeated his
actions with the back cinch, then turned to face her with accusing eyes.

"Quit trying to change the subject. I didn't run
away," she replied. "And if you're so concerned about me running
away, why are you teaching me to saddle my own horse?"

"Now who's trying to change the subject? The only reason
you didn't run away is because your plan didn't work. What the hell did you
think you were doing anyway?"

Ignoring his questions and the anger in his eyes, she turned
back to a safer subject, one that made her the accuser and not the accused.
"You went through my personal things. That's inexcusable."

"Then I guess it won't do any good to apologize, and
there's no reason to discuss it.” He dropped the stirrup in place, adjusted the
saddle and tightened the front cinch. “You won't forgive me and I won't ask you
to."

She followed as he led the horse behind the doctor's office.
He had succeeded in turning her away from the subject she'd wanted to pursue,
the subject of a woman named Christina.

"You always mount from the left side of the horse,"
he said, as he came to a stop. "Put your left foot in the stirrup and
swing your right leg over the horse's back."

He waited made one last adjustment to the front cinch while
she swallowed her fear and walked toward him.

"Take the reins in your left hand and hold on to the
saddle horn with the same hand. I'll hold the stirrup straight. Just slip your
foot in it and swing yourself up. Unless you'd prefer to ride side-saddle, but
I wouldn't advise it, especially where we're going. I can't imagine it could be
very secure."

She stood close to the horse, reaching up to grasp the saddle
and the reins, holding her breath. Her legs trembled. Her whole
body
trembled. She didn't want to do this, but there was no way he was going to
leave her behind.

Her grip tightened. She looked down at the stirrup. How was
she ever going to maneuver this?

"Pull yourself up and swing your right leg over,"
he told her.

She pushed with her left leg and pulled with all her might,
but she couldn't make it. The horse's back was too high and she was too weak.
Just when she was about to give up, a hand on her backside pushed her up and
she stood in the stirrup, suspended in air, too terrified even to take
exception to the intimate contact.

"Wait!" she cried in panic as the horse moved
slightly.

Her right leg swung over the horse's back and she dropped
none too gently in the saddle. With her right foot, she searched frantically
for the other stirrup, but whenever she managed to get that foot situated, the
other one would come out. The stirrups were too long.

"Take it easy," Rafe said gently.

Anne turned to look down at him where he stood at her left
and drew some reassurance from the calmness in his eyes.

"Move your foot," he said, in that same soft,
calming voice.

She did as she was told. Shifting in the saddle, she tried in
vain to find a comfortable position. "It feels awkward."

Rafe smiled but kept his attention on what he was doing.
"You'll be sore for the first couple of days."

His hands worked skillfully at adjusting the length of the
stirrup, those hands that could kill so easily. She remembered their strength
when he'd held both her wrists in one hand last night, and she also remembered
their gentleness when he'd applied the poultice to her burnt hand. He was a man
of mystery and contradiction, a man who stirred her senses as much as he
stirred her curiosity.

His task completed, he looked up at her, squinting against
the glaring sun. "You didn't answer my question."

"What?" She'd been so absorbed in watching him, so
completely mesmerized, she had lost the thread of their conversation.

"What were you doing last night?"

He walked around the front of the horse, and then he was
standing on her right. Without warning, his hand closed around her slender
ankle.

She jerked away from the contact, adjusting her skirt when her
motion caused it to ride up above her boot. He smiled up at her crookedly. Her
face grew hot as her heart began to pound hard inside her chest. She held her
leg out of his way as he adjusted the right stirrup, trying not to think about
how close he was to her or how his touch made her melt inside.

"If you wanted to get yourself killed, there are easier
ways," he said.

"You went through my things. You know how little money I
have. I needed more. I learned a long time ago that people aren't always around
when you need them, and if you can't take care of yourself, no one else
will."

Rafe gazed up into her eyes for a moment before saying rather
sadly, "How'd you get to be so old so fast?"

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she wasn't quite sure why. For
someone who never cried, she'd been close to tears more in the past few days
than she had been throughout the rest of her life.

"My father used to say I was born old." She
swallowed with an effort, forcing the tears down.

"Couldn't you have thought of a safer way to earn
money?"

She laughed without humor. "Got any suggestions? The
only things I can do are play poker and sew, and I hate sewing more than I hate
gambling."

He walked around to the front of the horse, grasped the bridle,
and started leading the animal forward.

She gasped. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to lead him around in a circle and let you
get used to moving. Put your weight in the stirrups and hold on to the pommel
if you need to. As long as you stick with me, you don't have to worry about
money. I have enough for both of us."

She closed her eyes but the memory still came: Rafe Montalvo
reaching into his shirt pocket, withdrawing a
wanted
poster, holding it up to the dead man's face to see if the picture matched,
arguing with the sheriff over paying for the dead man's burial.

"I'll pay you back every cent," she told him.
"I don't want anything to do with your blood money."

"Well," he said, without turning around, "that
blood money's going to get you where you're going."

Silence stretched between them. She accustomed herself to the
unusual feel of the saddle. There was something rather exciting about putting
her legs around a living, breathing beast. She'd never put her legs around
anything in her life before. It didn't seem quite decent.

She sat atop an animal that was capable of carrying her at
great speeds, an animal whose strength and stamina she could not fathom, an
animal that could easily injure or even kill her should it decide to do so, but
that had been gentled through centuries of breeding and training to the point
that it would allow itself to be used for her purposes. It was thrilling and
frightening at the same time.

She studied the back of the man who walked in front of her.
He knew the secret of this animal. He knew many secrets, some of which she had
no desire to uncover. He knew the secret of killing and then going on living as
if it had never happened.

She wasn't sure she wanted to know any more about him than
she knew right now. It seemed every time she peeled back another layer, she
discovered something dark and frightening. And yet, no matter what else she
knew about him, she was beginning to believe he would not harm her – at least
as long as she kept the secret of the gold's location.

"How many
wanted
posters do you carry around
with you?" she asked.

He didn't look at her or change his pace. "I've lost
count."

They reached the point where they'd started. Rafe moved to
the left side of the horse, reached up without a word, and placed his hands on
her waist. She had no choice but to grab onto his shoulders as he pulled her
down from the saddle and stood her on her feet before him.

He didn't release her as she'd expected. Instead, he stood
with his hands nearly spanning her waist, his face close above hers. She
glanced away when she could bear the intensity of those pale eyes no longer.

"You knew that man last night," she murmured
softly. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.

Rafe stared at her in silence for a long moment. She couldn't
look at him. The heat of his gaze on her was enough to cause her to squirm in
his grip. His nearness violated her composure and stripped away her defenses.
She couldn’t back away and he would not.

"I had a poster on him," he said.

Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to resist the magnetism
that sizzled between them, wondering if he could feel it too. "You... you
said you'd met him in the desert. What happened? How did you know him?"

He dropped his hands away and she released a ragged breath,
regaining her composure with an effort. Turning to the horse, he dropped the
reins over the animal's head. "Let it—"

"Let it be?"

"I knew him, all right? I had tracked him before, when I
was in the army."

She nearly gasped with shock. This was more than he had
revealed about himself since they'd met, and she had a feeling he hadn't meant
to reveal even that. "You were in the army?"

"Let it—damn, I said I was in the army. He rode with a
band
of...
They used to raid along the Texas border when I was stationed at Fort
Bliss."

"Why were you still tracking him?"

"He
was tracking
us,
Annie.
Don't you see? Do you think you and I are the only people who know about the
gold?"

"I didn't know—"

"There's a lot you don't know."

"But if you weren't tracking him, why did you have the
wanted
poster? Why—"

She hardly saw him move before his arms closed around her. He
pulled her against his hard chest almost angrily, knocking the breath from her
for a moment. He held her tightly with one arm, lifted her chin with his other
hand, and forced her to look into the blue depths of his eyes.

A killer's eyes, but what she saw there was not murder or
malice or evil. Pain–the word flashed through her mind. The hardness was gone,
replaced by something so profoundly sad she felt like crying.

His lips took hers, moved roughly, desperately against hers,
prying them open. His tongue touched hers, explored.

Despair.

Her body responded to his, to the feel of his hands on her,
cupping her buttocks. She shivered at the shocking contact as he ground himself
against her, the hardness she felt through both sets of clothing.

Panting, burning, she pried her hands between them, pressed
against his chest, felt the erratic beating of his heart. But something
changed. Roughness replaced by gentleness, despair replaced by desire.

The male scent of him flowed through her senses, the coarse
feel of his beard against her face, the soft feel of his firm lips, his breath
mingling with hers.

Desire.

Her mind told her to fight the strange languor that crept up her
legs and flooded her secret places with heat. Possessed her. Instead, she clung
to him,